


Our boots on with both hands

by glovered



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-23
Updated: 2011-02-23
Packaged: 2017-10-24 09:15:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/261651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glovered/pseuds/glovered
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean finds the ripped hoodie and mends it for Sam. <strike>Brotherly schmoop!</strike> Kinda cracky!<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	Our boots on with both hands

**Author's Note:**

> written for [](http://strgazr04.livejournal.com/profile)[**strgazr04**](http://strgazr04.livejournal.com/) in the [](http://ohsam.livejournal.com/profile)[**ohsam**](http://ohsam.livejournal.com/) h/c meme. I keep writing fic dealing with the soul issue, but that is current...In other news, I just ate a lot of chocolate and might actually keel over.

What would you like? I'd like my money's worth.  
                                          Try explaining a life bundled with episodes of this--  
        swallowing mud, swallowing glass, the smell of blood  
on the first four knuckles.  
                                                            We pull our boots on with both hands  
but we can't punch ourselves awake and all I can do  
                  is stand on the curb and say _Sorry  
                                                           about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine._

I couldn't get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time.  
                                   

###### -[Richard Siken](http://community.livejournal.com/theysaid/835680.html)  


  
  


It's not worth it, going around, not trusting Sam. Sam's all into screwing up his mouth lately, and staring Dean down like he can read the past half a year on Dean's face. They're the both of them bruised and a little affected in mannerisms right now. They're dealing, they've come a long way.

Dean noticed a bullet hole in Sam's jacket a few days ago, but didn't say a thing. It's all about his plan, how he's gonna cut them both a break and just chill the fuck out. He doesn't want to see it though, and he can't manage to take his eyes off it when they're sitting across from each other at diner tables, on opposite beds, next to one another at bars, so he finds the sewing kit (army. manly, utilitarian. non-pink.) at the bottom of his bag, finds a patch, and threads a needle and--

There'd been another tear around the side that he'd mended too, but years ago. In a past life Dean'd obviously been a seamstress. Sam, on the other hand -- Dean looks up to see him at the table, squinting at his computer screen -- Sam'd been one of those early humans who'd taken down rabbits at fifty paces with just a pebble and sling, brow low. In his spare time, he'd probably squinted over cave paintings, the real artistic type that edged civilization forward, pictograph by pictograph, the first dude around to eat salads.

Dean smooths his hand over the patched shoulder, the only useless gesture, and then wads the jacket into the duffel by his feet so that no one can accuse him of being sentimental. He feels constantly watched.

When Sam puts the jacket on later that day, he shrugs it on easy as pie, familiar-like.

"Oh," he says. He picks at the soft stitch that Dean added, wrinkles his forehead over at Dean in silent question.

"You looked suspicious." Dean turns to grab his wallet, his own jacket along with it. "Bullet hole in your clothes is bound to scare the civilians. Anyway, get shot there?"

"Yeah, looks like it." Sam avoids his eyes.

"Must've been a lot of blood. Must've been a bitch to clean. Why'd you keep it?"

"Just attached to it, I guess."

"Attached to it? I've seen the rest of that shit you bought for yourself recently. And this-" Dean waves to Sam's torso-region. "This is no male model, no Armani outerwear. It's gotta be five years old, at least."

He doesn't know why he's going on about this. They're just so trained in following up on that nagging feeling that saves them in cases, that they've started to do it off the clock. Dean knows that sort of thing is dangerous, shit'll fuck up your life if you dig. Gotta bob along, fight the shallow current, float on the surface.

"Who knows why I kept it? Not supposed to think about it, you know?" Sam says. And then he's up in Dean's space. Dean goes warm all over. He raises an eyebrow, looking up the half a foot that feels broken down to inches between them.

But then Sam undercuts the proximity by dredging up the same spiel he's been chipping at for days. "Dean, I'm sorry. I know I've got no clue how much shit I have to apologize for, but believe me when I say," he catches Dean's gaze. It clicks, holds. "I'm really, really sorry."

Dean makes for the door, stomach turning, needs to escape.

"Good brothers respect gag reflexes," he calls over his shoulder.

"What?"

"C'mon, emo kid, let's get you some food in you."

But after dinner, Sam's still on it. Dean can sense it, how he's hovering in the periphery, shifting from foot to foot, and sighing as Dean shuts the motel room door behind them, tosses the keys onto the tabletop and goes to flip on the TV.

"Dude," Dean finally says.

"Sorry for letting that vamp bite you."

"Blurt much?"

"And I'm sorry I let Cas hurt that kid. I knew how painful it was, but that didn't matter to me."

Dean looks at Sam, standing straight-backed and ready for some twelve-step bullshit that Dean is never gonna go through. He's going to help Sam circumvent it like they've managed to circumvent the Grand Canyon, despite its being a giant pit smack dab along some of the major highways. And as he looks Sam up and down, a tiny bit of clarity pings off one of the multitude of memories concerning the two of them they've got jointly wedged away in some two-sided bin of group consciousness. He suddenly sees the jacket for what it is.

This is probably not the time to bring it up.

"And sorry for, well, you weren't there," Sam's saying. He rubs a hand over his mouth, looking upset. "It's just, I told someone once that family only slows you down. But that's not true."

"Look, I don't care," Dean says, because he knows what he knows. He's all pleased-feeling, can't kick it. Because the important thing at hand, the thing that's got Dean grinning right now, at this moment, is this jacket.

Sam's apparently been toting it around for years now, it fits him still despite how much he's not that slim kid Dean rescued from academia. It's been rained on and bled on and caught on chain link when Sam's misjudged jumping a fence. Dean recognizes it now. This jacket is the first piece of clothing Dean had bought Sam after he lost everything in the fire at Stanford, and soulless-Sam kept it.

"Dean, I'm serious. Stop smiling," Sam says. "And don't you dare change the subject, we need to talk about this."

"I gotcha Sammy," Dean sits on the bed, pulls off a boot, then tries to throw a sock at Sam, who ducks, and then breathes out hard through his nose.

"Dean, seriously."

"Stop being so negative all the time. There's a lot to rejoice about," Dean tells him. He catches the sock that's chucked back at him. "For instance, if you were still soulless, you would've probably eaten this."

Dean can read Sam, as always. He can read how Sam evaluates the idea, quietly horrified, runs a tongue over his teeth.

"Did I--"

"No. What? No," Dean says, suddenly apprehensive, because one sock memory could lead to another, and they can't have that. "No, of course you didn't actually -- just, you don't have to belabor the point, okay? I know you're sorry. We're gonna get you through this, and it's all going to be fine."

He stands, maybe to grab a beer.

"It's not some thing I can just forget, not any more than I already have." Sam spreads his arms. "Dean, you gotta be with me on this."

"Sam--"

"It's real life, man," Sam tells him, as if Dean doesn't know. "Everything I did, happened."

Dean shoves Sam in that shoulder as he moves past, but Sam grabs him by the wrist. Dean could fight back, but he wants to see this through, he has to turn back.

Sam moves in, and for a delirious second Dean thinks Sam's putting the amulet back around his neck, wants to say "Sam, you sly bastard, I knew you grabbed it out of the trash can when I-" but it's just Sam's hands twining in the stretched fabric of Dean's t-shirt, two years later. He keeps expecting it to happen.

"Gonna fix me? Patch me up?" Sam says. He's frowning down at Dean, words at odds with his expression, at odds with their proximity. "This isn't something you can just take a needle to, call it a day."

Dean steps in at the challenge, Sam's inhale felt against his opposite action, and he growls: "Don't go all metaphors on me, I know what it's not."

He knows it's not nothing that Sam kept that jacket, a remnant of where they've been. It's not nothing that Sam wants to fix things so damn bad, maybe more so because he knows, he _knows_ that Dean can just let him off easy, will be there no matter what. It's not nothing that they're here right now, rather than dead a thousand times and then some.

Sam kisses him between the beds, then, and it's just another line clearly drawn on their lives, a delineation between what is and what will be. He ducks to mouth along Dean's jaw, and Dean hauls him in even closer, breath catching. He kisses Sam back like a saint and then catches Sam's bottom lip between his teeth when he's least expecting it. He's happy to suffer the consequences.

Dean knows what this is not. It is not impossible and it is not the opposite of everything.


End file.
